Working with a different hosting option that uses FTPS instead of SFTP, I found that my ASUS RT-AC56R was preventing passive, explicit FTPS connections. It took some hours of troubleshooting and patient support of the hosting company but I finally narrowed down the problem when I bypassed the router and was able to connect to the server securely when directly plugged into my … [Read more...]
November update KB3097877 causing issues for some Windows 7 computers
One of the updates that came out with November's Patch Tuesday has been causing problems for a small sample of Windows 7 computers. KB3097877 has had two symptoms reported - Outlook crashes and the Logon issues. The logon problem prevents you from logging into the computer in normal or safe mode. The screen will show the normal "Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to login" message. Upon … [Read more...]
Troubleshooting time synchronization for domain-joined computers
Time on Windows is usually straight forward. For home computers (not joined to a domain), they simply get their time from an Internet source like time.windows.com and the main trick is just to adjust the time zone from Pacific Time to your own when you first get it. For domain-joined computers, they will pull the time from the domain controllers by default. If somebody changes … [Read more...]
Identify what last woke your computer
If you regularly put your computer to sleep to save power and money, it can be very frustrating when you return to your computer to find it powered on. To troubleshoot why it's awake when it is supposed to be asleep, you can run some commands to try to identify the cause. The Power Configuration command built into Windows allows you command line access to set your power … [Read more...]
Excel 2013 hangs at ‘Starting…’ but runs with Excel Safe Mode
I ran into an issue with Excel 2013 on a relatively new install. Excel would successfully launch under the Administrator account but not as any other user. It just hung at the Starting... splash screen, even after promoting the standard user to a local Administrator. Only launching Excel with the command, excel.exe /safe would allow the program to finish loading for the … [Read more...]